creation of Pseudomonas newsgroup

In response to Brian Hoyle's posting in bionet.general in which he
objected to the creation of a new newsgroup, bionet.organisms.pseudomonas, I
would like to explain that the idea for this newsgroup came out of discussions
at the recent ASM annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The proposal was
enthusiastically received at the Pseudomonas club meeting, and I collected
over 60 e-mail addresses at the time, having added many more since then.
Ergo, I think there is more than sufficient support for a Pseudomonas
newsgroup among researchers in our field. Brian negates his own objection by
correctly observing that "those interested in a specific topic may not want to
wade through other, "useless" information." If Brian is "leery" of "ultra-
specific newsgroups," then I am far more worried about having to wade through
the veritable mountain of information available in the many newsgroups and
on the internet in general just to find the information I need to keep our lab
moving forward. One truely excellent way to cut out the "noise" and focus on
the useful stuff is to create specific newsgroups so that particular
communities of researchers can share information and ideas in a more
concentrated way. I'm sure Brian is perfectly correct when he says that "I find
the bionet.micro newsgroup a useful place to pick up information." If "picking
up information" is the only thing the bionet was good for, we would need only
a fraction of the newsgroups we already have, particularly if, as Brian
suggests, our discipline (microbiology) needs more interaction, not
fragmentation. The whole idea behind the creation of specific newsgroups is
to provide a forum, a central location, so that workers in a particular
discipline can share ideas, data, and technical problems unique to their field
without having to roam through the entire bloody internet to find what they
need. The fact that they find their own newsgroup useful does not imply at all
that they will not "pick up information" and share in discussions in a whole
variety of other newsgroups. This is not an "either-or" proposition. Well, this
is my $0.02 worth. Cheers, Bruce